


Melodies

by imdrowningingaylosers



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:44:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3760195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdrowningingaylosers/pseuds/imdrowningingaylosers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loud and passionate, Bokuto had always considered verbal communication the best way to get closer to someone, but when Akaashi stays home sick and Bokuto goes to visit him, he discovers that sometimes you get closest without words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melodies

His leg bounced up and down impatiently, causing his entire desk to rattle and the students at neighbouring seats to glare at him. His eyes ticked along with the hand on the clock at the front of the room, the black writing on the whiteboard beneath it failing to grab his attention. The teacher glanced to him every couple of seconds, her words tumbling monotonously into the air of the classroom, unbroken even by her irritation at his obvious disinterest in the material, but this was nothing she shouldn’t have been used to by now. After all, this was Bokuto Koutarou and it was last period. 

When the clock clicked and the minute hand moved to settle against the mark showing it was finally 3:45, Bokuto’s yellow eyes, open wide enough to be worrisome (especially with his lack of blinking), landed on the teacher’s face, as if he was trying to push her words back into her mouth and prevent any more from flowing out with the intensity of his gaze alone. She stared right back at him bitterly, raising the volume in a childish attempt to spite her most detested student, and finished her lecture off with a couple winding elongated sentences. She then took a long breath, as if she was going to go into another long speech about some poet or another, basked in the tears building up in Bokuto’s eyes from having been open for too long, and finally stated, “You can go.”

Bokuto flew out of the classroom without sparing his teacher another glance and made straight down the hall to where he knew Akaashi would be waiting for him with a bored look on his face, staring off into the distance with his hands in his pockets. How that boy had the energy to think after a whole day of school, Bokuto would never understand. He turned the corner and, as expected, a composition of glossy black curls was smushed against the locker next to his, eyes almost as dark as his hair focused on some distant point outside the window, or maybe even further than that, somewhere in some corner of Akaashi’s secretive mind. His expression was indecipherable, as it always was to Bokuto’s sour disappointment. No matter how hard he tried to guess what that boy was thinking the way Kuroo could read Kenma, he failed miserably, usually ending with Akaashi staring at him blankly for a couple seconds before slowly raising one neat eyebrow. This was usually the follow-up to some bizarre surprise Bokuto tried to plan out for him or a gift he was absolutely sure Akaashi would be ecstatic about and jump into his arms like in that one shoujo manga he stole from his cousin out of curiosity. 

He slowed down into a brisk walk so as not to trip in front of the younger boy and embarrass himself as he’d done so many times before. He was a couple of metres away when Akaashi picked up on his presence (another terrifyingly inexplicable ability of his) and turned to look at him. His face folded into a small smile, sending waves of heat through Bokuto’s chest and forcing a huge grin to bloom on his own face. 

“Sorry sorry, I kept you waiting again!” he greeted with a cheerful half-apology, rooted from the routine of his classes being stretched past the timetabled end of the day by teachers who had some ungrounded grudge against him rather than any history of Akaashi being upset with him. 

“It’s fine, I just got out myself.” he replied with a nod, pushing himself away from the metal surface of the lockers. Bokuto put in the code to his padlock and swung the thin green door open, hurriedly loading some random books he guessed he would need for homework that night into his bag. He then closed his locker, clicking the heavy padlock back into place, and set off towards the main doors with Akaashi dragging his feet slightly next to him. They were a curious duo to anyone who witnessed their saunter out of the school gates – a tall, muscular boy with grey and black striped hair and a bounce to his step blabbering ceaselessly and gesticulating wildly, and a smaller boy with pale skin and impossibly dark hair whose dragging feet shredded the already tortured bottoms of his pant legs. They looked peculiar at best, but when they stopped by the street and turned their heads in unison, it was undeniable that the taller oozed warmth and excitement and anticipation for everything and nothing at all, and the shorter had lashes that reached almost to his dark neat eyebrows and cheekbones that sloped down into a delicate jaw to finish off a face that was at the very least just short of perfect. 

However, that day the skin under his eyes was a couple shades darker, tinted with navy and contrasted against his skin, gradually melting into a heated pink on his cheeks. Bokuto scrutinized him out of the corner of his eye, worry crawling up into his throat, his tired brain whirring through possibilities of ways to voice his concerns without sounding like he’d been staring at Akaashi or paying more attention to him than a normal guy would to someone who was just a normal friend. His thoughts were interrupted by a muffled cough. 

“Akaashi?”

Silence. Bokuto rolled his eyes fondly – Akaashi had a tendency to do his best to stifle anything that could make others worry about him out of fear of inconveniencing them, something Bokuto had always found unbearably adorable. 

“Akaaashiiii” he trilled. “Akaashi don’t ignore me!”

Black glassy eyes skipped to him and the pale boy sighed slowly through his nose before humming in response, already knowing what’s coming for him.

“You coughed.” Bokuto pointed out. 

“I am aware.”

“You’re sick.”

Silence again. Bokuto stared at the sick boy for a while before throwing an arm around his shoulders. 

“Akaashi, you got yourself sick! You’re always telling me to eat healthy and shit and then you go and get yourself sick!” he exclaimed into the side of Akaashi’s face to make sure the message sank in or else the setter would insist that he was fine and would do nothing to get himself better.

Akaashi had retreated into himself with his shoulders hunched to cover his ears. The motion, however, happened to also raise Bokuto’s arm and brush it against the shorter boy’s cheek. Bokuto flushed from the contact momentarily, but composed himself through the lingering feeling that something was wrong. He pressed his forearm into Akaashi’s face less tenderly than he’d want to be doing (though the circumstances in general weren’t favorable) and almost yelped at the heat. His arm retreated and he grabbed the black-haired setter by the elbow to stop him in his already slow tracks. Akaashi looked at him, confused by the amount of unexpected movements Bokuto was making and the openly worried expression his face had adopted.

“Akaashi you’re super warm!”

“Mmmm.”

Bokuto tugged on his limb a little roughly, his concern growing by the second and taking over his tendency for suspicious tenderness when it came to the setter.

“You have a fucking fever, why didn’t you go home during the day?” he lowered his voice slightly so as to avoid his tone coming across as harsh. He already knew the answer and mocked it in the privacy of his mind as it was escaping Akaashi’s lips.

“I feel fine, it’s probably nothing.”

Bokuto raised his yellow eyes to the cloud soaring somewhere above their heads and counted down from ten quickly under his breath before gently tugging at Akaashi’s trapped elbow to get them walking towards the direction of the younger boy’s house. Obviously, Bokuto was generally the more exasperating of the two of them – he was moody and a little insecure at times and he often craved attention from anyone around, but when it came to Akaashi he sometimes went a little over the top. He knew it was no secret to the team that he felt more than friendly towards their setter, and he wasn’t one to lie to himself either. He was fully aware that at some point the warm feeling of having a friend who bothered to try and keep up with him morphed into something a little different. After all, it’s not like Akaashi was his only friend and Kuroo could keep up no problem (if not outrun him a little to everyone’s despair), and one day it hit Bokuto that black locks on the court, in the corridor and bouncing next to him as they walked made his hands tingle and made him more affectionate than he’d ever thought he’d want to be with anyone. But Akaashi also had little characteristics that, albeit irreplacably him, were a little frustrating to deal with. For example, how little care he took of himself. 

They walked the rest of the way to Akaashi’s front door in a comfortable silence, disrupted when Bokuto followed his friend up the front steps. The brunet froze, looking over his shoulder at the wing-spiker with a mixture of shock and horror painted on his flawless face. Despite them having been friends for a while and him being very fond of Bokuto, he had never invited him over to his house. He was very private and felt slightly anxious as to what Bokuto would think of something as personal as his living space. The older boy, clever and watchful, patted his shoulder encouragingly, exclaiming, “Don’t worry, I’m not coming in! Just thought I’d say hi to your mom!” 

Suspicious, Akaashi watched his friend’s face for a bit before deciding he couldn’t figure out what Bokuto was up to and opening the front door. His mother appeared in the front room almost immediately with a wide smile on her face, her pearly teeth becoming even more visible when she spotted Bokuto, her ‘second son’ as she called him.

“Bokuto-kun, sweetheart! What a surprise! Could it be Keiji finally invited you over?” she sang, her chestnut curls bobbing up and down with the enthusiasm of her voice. Akaashi looked so much like her from the face it always made Bokuto appreciate biology a little bit more when he saw her. Akaashi made his way a couple steps inside to toe off his school shoes, his eyes peering over his shoulder, watching Bokuto to see just what his plan had actually been. The older teen smiled his most charming smile at Akaashi’s mother, deliberately avoiding seeing the betrayal on his crush’s face. “Aah, no, I just wanted to make sure Akaashi got home safely since he’s sick with a fever and all, but I’ll be going now!”

He turned and jogged down the steps just as Akaashi’s choked gasp reached his ears.

 

 

Bokuto sat in last period, chin supported on the palm of his hand and the wood of his desk painfully flat against his elbow. He stared out the window absent-mindedly, feet not moving more than to tent out his school shoes with tiny waddles of his toes.

Akaashi’s mom had kept him home sick and had even gone so far as to call Bokuto’s home the previous evening to thank him for letting her know that Akaashi had a fever and asking if he would stop by later with any schoolwork the boy had missed. She was an incredibly kind woman and caring mother, but she was a little ditzy and Akaashi was great at hiding that something was wrong, so he usually managed to pass off being sick as just being a little tired. 

The day had gone by excrutiatingly slowly, minutes dragging on the tongues of his teachers, slowing down their pronounciation into pathetic moans about binomials and buffer solutions. Bokuto even dedicated a fair twenty minutes of his English class to supervising the clock on the wall to make sure the world wasn’t moving the minute-hand backwards just to mess with his head, but he was faced with the cruel reality of his boredom being the sole culprit of the torturous lengthiness of the day. He had Akaashi’s work in a neat pile in the corner of his desk, his own papers folded haphazardly and thrown messily into his bag. For once his teacher finished on time, if not a minute or so early, as if Bokuto’s sensationally rare lack of elation in today’s class was deserving of a reward. He would never understand teachers. All the other students were always scolded for sleeping in class, so why they all despised him for his animation baffled him to no end. Akaashi always said he imagined being Bokuto’s teacher was practically an extreme sport but the wing-spiker saw nothing wrong with being excitable and enthusiastic – it was partly those characteristics that got him the position of captain of their volleyball team. 

He packed his things and strolled out of the room, heading down the hall with less zest than he probably ever had. He was going to stop by his own house to change and drop off his things before heading over to Akaashi’s with his work, since the boy had a doctor’s appointment at 3:30 and probably wouldn’t be home until a little bit later. Bokuto took a different way than he usually took with the brunet, hoping to liven up the otherwise dull day in any way possible. The path was actually slightly longer, but he figured it was better to waste some time walking than to sit in his room waiting until he could go see Akaashi. Other than a number of passive aggressive texts about Bokuto exposing his poor state to his mom, he hadn’t heard anything about the sick boy since the day before and it perturbed him. 

When he finally reached his house, it was already five past 4. He figured it gave him enough time to leave his things and change out of his school uniform and get to Akaashi’s house. He laid out the work he needed to deliver in the middle of his desk in plain sight, so as to be sure he wouldn’t forget it, and he quickly slipped into a pair of grey jeans and a black hoodie. In the end he spent the longest on fixing his hair, but he was out of his front door by twenty past without forgetting Akaashi’s work. 

The day wasn’t necessarily one Bokuto would describe as ‘nice’, but it was refreshing. The sky was coated with clouds thick enough to block out blinding rays of sun, but not enough to allow an unpleasant chill to swallow the air below them. Leaves rustled in delicate pushes of wind, fluttering on branches to powder the otherwise harmonious quiet of humming car engines in the distance and the occasional bird calling above Bokuto’s head. His footsteps were surprisingly light for his big body and large energy supply, finally picking up to its normal levels now that he was getting closer to Akaashi’s house. When the dark red roof slithered into sight, he surrendered to the grin scrunching his cheeks and baring his straight row of teeth. He practically skipped to the front door and slammed his knuckles excitedly into the cold wood to announce his arrival.

Akaashi’s mother swung the door open and once again her face lit up at the sight of Bokuto. 

“Bokuto-kun! What wonderful timing, I got back with Akaashi about fifteen minutes ago!” She ushered him in and motioned for him to take off his shoes. He did so, glancing around at the inside of the house. It was very neat, with high bookshelves and dark brown furniture pressing down a warm blood red carpet. There was a fireplace, but it was dark and cold, creating a comfort of promised warmth should anyone need it. 

“How is he feeling?” he questioned, turning to the gleeful woman. Bokuto had never met Akaashi’s father, but it was clear that the raven’s composed and quiet demeanor must have come from him. 

“Oh, he’s better now! His fever’s gone now and he slept most of the day, so the doctor said it must have just been a minor infection caught in the early stages, all thanks to you!” she chirped, pinching his cheek lightly and laughing. Bokuto smiled sincerely, her warm gesture making him feel at ease. 

“It’s nothing, I know how he is when it comes to taking care of himself!” he replied, pressing his arms to his sides in a gesture Kuroo always mocked him for, calling it a ‘pathetic attempt at cuteness’, though Akaashi’s mother seemed to love it every single time. She cooed and smiled widely at him before patting him on the arm and telling him that Akaashi was upstairs and to go to him. Bokuto bowed to her, secretly grateful for the opportunity to finally go and see the setter, and made his way cautiously up the stairs, slowly to give himself a chance to familiarize himself with the layout and see how Akaashi actually lives.

The entire house was in shades of browns and creams, the steps creaking heavily beneath his feet as if acknowledging his presence and rushing him up to Akaashi’s room. He could really see the brunet living in those colors, all warm hues and darks against lights, like Akaashi himself. When he reached the top of the steps, he marvelled at the size of the house – though only slightly bigger than his own, the minimalistic layout birthed an immense amount of space to breathe and think and admire. Wood shone with cleanliness and good health, and carpet rustled under his socked feet as he made his way across the first floor landing to the only door that was closed, guessing it must be the one leading to Akaashi’s room. He began to feel slightly nervous, knowing how his crush felt about having people seeing his living space, but he clutched the papers in his hand a little harder, letting them give an encouraging crinkle, knocked gently on the door and waited.

The round knob turned and the door retreated, Akaashi’s face appearing before Bokuto. It may have only been one day he hadn’t seen him, but Bokuto let himself admire the other boy quickly before smiling in hopes of hiding his blush. “Hey hey, Akaashi!” he exclaimed, “How are you feeling? I brought you your work!”

Akaashi looked to the side and smiled shyly, the unfamiliarity of Bokuto being in his house puzzling him slightly. He pulled the door open wider and stepped to the side, allowing the other access to his room. Bokuto slid in quickly, scared that Akaashi would change his mind. His room was very big but it was impeccably tidy, which came as little surprise to Bokuto. An entire wall was coated with books on shelves, their colorful spines livening up the toned browns that extended as far as the covers on his bed. The bed itself was a double, a comfort Bokuto found himself feeling extremely bitter about, and a wooden desk sat underneath the window, light falling onto pages of open books Akaashi had apparently been trying to use to catch up on material he missed that day. What caught Bokuto’s eye, however, was the piano standing in the corner of the room, dusted and waxed, it’s black surface reminding him of a black lake on a windless day, seemingly peaceful but holding beneath it an unimaginable depth. His thoughts were interrupted by a gentle tug at the papers in his hand and he turned to Akaashi, who had apparently been watching him closely as he admired the room. There was little distance between them and Bokuto stared mindlessly at the shorter boy before realizing he was trying to access the work he’d been brought. He let go of the papers and swallowed heavily, remembering that his question had been left unanswered.

“Well? How’re you feeling? And don’t tell me you’re mad at me for telling your mom!” 

Akaashi puffed his cheeks out in irritation. “Well, now that you remind me, that was actually very cruel.”

Bokuto threw his hands above his head and cried in faked apology, “Ohh, Akaashi, I’m soooo sorry for caring about your health when you’re too busy curling your hair!” 

The brunet’s jaw dropped in an offended scoff and he whacked Bokuto across the head with the papers, leaving little damage. “I don’t curl my hair, it’s natural! Besides, look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t spend at least ten minutes fixing your hair before you came here!” 

Bokuto threw his head back in laughter in order to avoid admitting that Akaashi was right, especially considering how there was good reason for that extra effort. Instead, he turned back to the piano and began to approach it, something unsettling setting in his gut, unrelated to the fact that he had no idea Akaashi could play. It was the thought of those slender fingers treading across white and black keys, emotions trickling out into melody, doubtlessly honest. He dropped his hand to the polished surface and relished in the cold against his skin. 

“I didn’t know you could play!” he stated, turning to look at Akaashi, showing him that he meant it as an observation rather than a judgement, an assumption he knew the setter sometimes tended to make when it came to things he found important. The boy laid the homework sheets on his desk and approached Bokuto, stopping halfway between his starting point and the piano stool. He shrugged his shoulders, visibly relaxing. 

“Yeah, I don’t play in competitions or anything so I never mentioned it. I started playing when I was 8.”

Bokuto huffed. “Oho, that’s a long time! You must be super good!” He leaned on the piano playfully, raising his leg against its side in a mockery of a seductive gesture. “Play for me, Akaashi.” he whined in an exaggerated high-pitched voice. Akaashi chuckled slightly, but shrugged again and made his way to the instrument. Bokuto recoiled into a normal pose, genuinely surprised at how easy it was to get Akaashi to agree. He found himself a little confused as to what he was supposed to do while Akaashi played, but the boy motioned for him to sit on one side of the stool. They pressed close to each other and Akaashi gave Bokuto a small smile, flushed cheeks dipping into his dimples and making Bokuto regret the decision to wear a hoodie instead of a t-shirt. Pale thin fingers reached for the white teeth of the piano, settling softly on their surface as if greeting them after a period of separation. The wing-spiker tried to make himself smaller to give Akaashi more room, but then his fingers started skipping from key to key, sounds evaporating into the air, so clear and synchronized that Bokuto could nearly taste them. He froze and watched as the setter treaded from white to black to white to black again, the pattern of presses and brushes through a labirynth of shining white keys, indecipherable and unbearably perfect. Not a single note was off and the sounds made his muscles loosen and relax, any nerves he may have ever felt drifting away with the notes that had already passed. Bokuto watched Akaashi’s hands, seemingly melting into the whiteness of the keys, the highest sounds and the lowest sounds so irrefutably Akaashi that he couldn’t help but look at the boy’s face, noticing how bizarrely similar he was to the instrument and the sounds it produced. He couldn’t keep up with the melody anymore, the transitions too quick and sly for him to grasp them, but Akaashi’s face was tranquil and relaxed, a small smile etched onto his lips, almost as if he was aware of just what he was doing to Bokuto. 

The song slowly came to its end and as the notes slowed to a gentle tinkling under Akaashi’s fingertips, a blush rose onto his cheeks, his lower lip pulled slightly between his teeth and chewed through a smile as Bokuto honestly tried his hardest to not stare at the brunet incessantly. When Akaashi’s hands stilled completely, the heat from the friction of the piano keys seemed to rise and swathe them, clouding Bokuto’s mind. He could feel his heart beating and the veins in his wrists pulsing, and then Akaashi turned to him a little and looked back at him and just sat there quietly, as if everything he could say he’d tried to communicate in the song he’d played. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the piano, or maybe it was just the way Akaashi was looking at him, calm but expectant, that made Bokuto lean towards him and delicately press their lips together. He was sure, though, that if Akaashi hadn’t tilted his head slightly, they wouldn’t have fit together so easily, and that if Akaashi weren’t kissing him back, there wouldn’t be so much warmth pressed against him. At some point one of those elegant hands grabbed at the material of his hoodie to keep him close, not one of those alarmingly passionate kisses that you sometimes see on tv, but one just like the music that had been spilled – soft and fragile, but full of emotion. 

They pulled away after a couple minutes, but Bokuto managed to just barely catch a glimpse of the blush on Akaashi’s cheeks before the setter had buried his face into the side of the taller boy’s neck. Bokuto put his arms around the other, breathing out shakily from exhiliration and pressing his smile into black curls. They sat in an electric silence until he questioned softly, “Play for me again later?”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you guys so so much for reading!! please leave feedback and comments it motivates me to write more and i hope u enjoyed!! :)  
> you can find me on tumblr yourweeaboobs, i run the blog with a friend (i'm agata)! thank you! :)


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